


Fallout Florida

by saltwatertaffy



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout 4, Fallout Florida, Fallout Shelter (Video Game)
Genre: Fallout, Fallout Fanfic, Fallout Original Characters, Ghouls, Original Characters - Freeform, Video game fanfic, fallout Ghouls, fallout florida - Freeform, fallout oc's, video games - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-14
Updated: 2020-08-14
Packaged: 2021-03-06 06:14:48
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,948
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25898797
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/saltwatertaffy/pseuds/saltwatertaffy
Summary: This is a WIP of Fallout Florida I'm just making up as I go along. I'm sick of us not having it, so I'm just gonna make do the thing. These are just OC's for now but eventually I plan on integrating characters we already know and love.Nothing in regards to Fallout belongs to me. I own nothing! : )
Comments: 1
Kudos: 3





	Fallout Florida

Foraging around the towering, southern stacks in Sunnyview was the last placed I wanted to be. The heat was nearly unbearable and my back ached from hunching over the dirt-caked mounds of garbage.  
“This god-awful sun, s’gon’ be the death of us all” my Aunt Maybelline griped in her rasping, throaty croak. Maybelline was well into her forties with long, skinny legs and a bulge of a gut that nearly made it to her upper thighs. Whenever she moved, which was not often, it would sway along with her and poke out from under her shirts, which were always drenched in sweat. I had lived with her as long as I could remember, and for the entire twenty years I had spent with her, I could count on both hands how many occasions she was pleasant to be around. Maybelline had one impressive eyebrow and she would hike it up at me at nearly any opportunity and wearily sigh in the resigned tone of someone used to disappointment, “I don’t know why I bother with you sometimes, Mack”.  
The thing was, I was never exactly sure why she was always so bitterly disappointed in me. As a matter of fact, I was not sure about a lot when it came to Maybelline. For all I knew, she might not even be related to me at all. We certainly shared no physical resemblance, but many cousins didn’t, as far as I heard anyway.  
I had been living with Maybelline before I had come to Sunnyview with her when I was a baby. This was the only thing that had convinced me that we were related. I had come to the conclusion that she had either found me as a baby in the post-apocalyptic ruins of the sunshine state (not likely) or by some curse, we really were blood.  
But facts were facts. There is no way a baby could survive the harsh conditions of the outside world. Hell, it was hard enough for a grown man to survive on his own with the wasteland fraught with danger as it was. If the heat did not kill you, there were vast pits of radioactive material left over from the last world war, and a huge quantity of creatures that were affected by it. The landscape was a death pit. What was left of the world was now a nightmare of demolished cities and littered with pre-war garbage. It had been over a hundred years since the war, and the population was not even one hundred percent on what caused it. Sure, different settlements had different theories, but no one was around to see it happen, and radiation and fire destroyed what evidence we would have had. So we speculated and theorized, but in the end people really stopped thinking about it. The question of what happened over 120-something years ago became similar to, “What happens after we die?” Mysterious. Eerie. Completely pointless to sit and hypothesize on. What was not completely pointless to think on was how to survive in this shithole wasteland. This planet is a hateful, twisted environment, a deathclaw eat deathclaw world, and if you don't live in a community or a town like I did, then survival was the number one rung on your ladder of priorities, and it usually took every effort just to scrounge enough to eat for the day.  
So why was I so desperate to bail on my little slice of safety? It was not exactly a raider-proof fortress of solitude, for one thing. Sunnyview consisted of what was once a cul-de-sac of six tall houses in a semi-circle, erected like a beacon in the middle of the wastes. Out of the six houses, the three largest were used as common houses for Sunnydale’s fifty-or-so residents. There was a road that led to the town entrance, or rather, when I say “road”, what I really mean is there was a clearing that was a bit road shaped amidst the garbage, rusted metal skeletons of vehicles, and tons of rotten housing material. Sunnyview had the only standing, habitable buildings for miles, and the landscape was mostly flat as far as I could see, aside from a few trees that were scorched black and snapped at the trunk and the stacks of garbage that the road wove around like a snake. This is not ideal for a number of reasons. First, the land down here is completely devoid of hills, so Sunnyview is visible for miles to the scouting eyes of raiders. Second, we were at least a two or three day’s walk from any proper settlement.  
At present, my plan for escape was to take what I could scrounge in a rucksack, grab my old and dented aluminum bat and ditch when the next caravan selling food made it into town.  
Maybelline did not take it well.  
“You ungrateful, dirty, rotten wretch! Ingrate! Filthy mongrel!” With each insult, she hurled another dirty cup or dish at my head. I was silently thanking god that I was tall and lanky, and as such I was a master of dodging Maybelline’s projectiles.  
“I just can’t stay here anymore, May! I told you that!” I shouted as an old coffee mug narrowly missed my skull.  
“Delinquent! Hateful little worm! Greedy, awful young swine you are. Y’know, Mack, it’s always take-take-take, me-me-me with you. Always has been.”  
I was used to her flinging insults and cutlery at me. She would almost always react this way whenever I disagreed with her or told her something she did not like, so I retreated to the yard behind the houses where foragers like me sifted through the garbage for things that the caravaners might buy, metal that was not completely rusted, or other useful items. We burnt what we did not use in a giant pit dug in the dirt, which probably accounted for the stench of burning debris that always hung around.  
I had only found a few ancient pre-war coins, some silverware and a still-functioning door hinge when Old Walter slapped a big, meaty hand on my shoulder with gusto. “Ole May got it in fer ya agin, eh son?” he said, smacking his jaws with a guffaw.  
Old Walter was a giant of a man, with an awe-inspiring beard that wrapped from his chin to ears and bowed out to meet his chest. He had a belly that rivaled Maybelline’s, but was a big enough man in every other aspect that he hid it well. Old Walter was one of the few residents of Sunnyview whose company I enjoyed.  
“I just told her I’m leaving next caravan” I said as I chucked a couple of springs and a half-salvageable toaster over my shoulder in my pile. “Oh, you been tellin’ her ‘bout that fer weeks. She knew already, jus’ dramatics. S’all” Walter replied. I admitted to myself it was true. I informed Maybelline two weeks ago when the stench of the burning garbage, May’s persistent griping, and what I supposed was youthful wanderlust got too much to bear.  
The plan in and of itself was mad. I figured I would wait until the next caravan pulled in to Sunnyview and try my damndest to get them to let me tag along. I didn't have any money and Maybelline expressly forbid me from taking any of the food, though I did sneak a can or two of beans here and there for the trip or maybe a bribe.  
So that left me with two options. The first was asking them to hire me on as a merc, and I was not too keen with long-range weapons. Or short range, either, to be honest.The odds of raiders attacking the caravan were not all that low, and I did not trust myself to be able to hit a moving target, especially when that moving target also had a gun and was a whole hell of a lot better at operating it than me.  
Option number two was going along as a forager. In this part of Florida, there was a massive amount of leftover stuff from pre-war years and many things could still be used, if not actually for its intended purpose. I had heard that immediately after the nuclear explosion, those who were left alive dragged carts, caravans, and wagons full of debris to the heart of the state, where Sunnydale was situated; the reason being that it was the least habituated, by humans anyway, it was the furthermost corner of the country, and all of the southern part of the state had been completely wiped off the map. Florida had become a dumping ground of sorts, a junk yard where you ditch what you do not need and find what you do on the ground.  
“Don’t pay ‘er no mind, son” Old Walter told me reassuringly after a minute with another pound of his massive fist on my back. I was certain I was already beginning to bruise.  
“You know I never pay any attention to Maybelline. She’s not happy unless she’s got something to go on about”, I said with a half sigh. He knew I was not lying.  
“Well, May’s had a hard life. Stands to reason it’ll turn ‘er into a hard woman” Walter replied.  
I bit back my snarky reply and settled for an impressively dramatic roll of my eyes instead. Walter was always taking up for May and her grouchiness. I had no clue how anyone could have a soft spot in their heart for Maybelline. I certainly did not have one. Walter took notice of my silence.  
“You be grateful for May, boy, ‘cause were it not for ‘her you’d-a been a goner for sure. That woman’s your only relation and its more’n most folks got anyhow.”  
I never liked Walter talking to me like I was some petulant brat. He would, from time to time, try and give me little pep talks like this hoping to warm me up to being more tolerant and patient with Maybelline but it always sounded like I was being scolded and so had the opposite effect.  
“She may be my only relative but lemme tell you, Walter, that’s the last time she’ll throw a coffee mug at my face” I said, a tad bit sourly.  
Mentally, I asked myself if I was insane for planning this whole excursion to begin with. I had never been particularly brave, never ventured beyond half a mile beyond Sunnydale’s limits. I never even went into the hogdog pen outside of town, but then again most folks never went near there if they could help it. They definitely were not the cuddliest of creatures.  
Hogdogs were about five feet in length with the ability to rear up on their back paws and skewer a man clean through on one of their curved tusks. They were a curious creation, an experiment in DNA splicing that worked too well. They had been around for as long as anyone could remember and were rumored to come from somewhere called the Ark, but no one I ever talked to had been there. They were found roaming the wastes everywhere and even though they were vicious predators, hogdogs were extremely useful. Most people used every bit of the animal; eating the meat, utilizing the paws, tailbone, tusks and tough, nearly impenetrable hide as makeshift armor, even pickling the snout in some regions as delicacies, if such a thing still existed.  
But with me being rightly insecure with most weaponry, other than my bat, and my lack of knowledge of the world outside Sunnyview left me with a deep pit of anxiety in my stomach.


End file.
